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Author(s): Shaun Breslin

Article Title:Why Growth Equals Power and Why it Shouldnt: The Caseof Chinas Global Economic Role

Year of publication: 2008

Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17516230701835906

Publisher statement: None
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Why growth equals power - and why it shouldn't: Constructing Visions of China

Shaun Breslin, University of Warwick, UK

ABSTRACT

When discussing the success of Chinas transition from socialism, there is atendency to focus on growth figures as an indication of performance. Whilst thesefigures are indeed impressive, we should not confuse growth with development andassume that the former necessarily automatically generates the latter. Much has beendone to reduce poverty in China, but the task is not as complete as some observerswould suggest; particularly in terms of access to health, education and welfare, andalso in dealing with relative (rather than absolute) depravation and poverty. Visions ofChina have been constructed that exaggerate Chinese development and power in the

global system partly to serve political interests, but partly due to the failure toconsider the relationship between growth and development, partly due to the failure todisaggregate who gets what in China, and partly due to the persistence of inter-national conceptions of globalised production, trade, and financial flows.

Keywords: China, growth, development, GDPism

It would be strange if Chinas economic performance had not generated massive

international attention. Of course China is not the first country to emerge from relative

backwardness with sustained high growth rates, but in many ways it is the sheer scale

of the Chinese case that marks it out for special attention; the sheer size of the

economy, the number and value of exports and the resulting trade surplus, the foreign

currency holdings, the massive flows of inward investment and more recently, the

growth of outward investment all combine to ensure that virtually no country has been

unaffected by what has happened in China.

But while the focus on China is entirely understandable, some of the

conclusions of studies of Chinese growth are not always as easy to comprehend. In

particular, while the overall size and scale of economic activity in China are clearly


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important, focussing on growth and the aggregate national situation GDPism1

tends to confuse growth with development and can result in the domestic distribution

of the fruits of growth being ignored. It also can be used to exaggerate the extent of

Chinese power in the global political economy both present and projected.

As such, the critique of GDPism contains two main elements. The first points

to the uneven developmental consequences of growth in China and the extent of

residual poverty issues that are well understood by not only students of Chinese

politics but also the Chinese leadership, and thus will be covered with relative brevity.

The second asks why it is that visions and understandings have been constructed that

tend to exaggerate Chinas wealth and power, and to outline the consequences of these

constructed images for policy making?

The answer is partly found in the domestic policy making environments of

countries responding to Chinese economic growth. Manoeuvring to compete for the

benefits that Chinas future economic wealth will generate (often fired by the

lobbying and initiatives of business interests)2 results in constructed understandings

of what China will become in the future dictating policy towards China today. Or put

another way, expectations of future power condition current policy to the extent that

China has been cognitively externally empowered. But the answer is also partly found

in the dominance of theoretical approaches that focus on the nation state as the unit of

analysis.

Whilst China is clearly important and likely to become ever more so, a

different knowledge of Chinas power and position in the global order is generated

1 I use the term GDPism as this paper was first presented at the Third East Asian Social PolicyResearch Network International Conference on GDPism and Risk: Challenges for SocialDevelopment and Governance in East Asia at the University of Bristols Centre for East

Asian Studies in July 2006.2 I discussed how UK policy towards China was influenced by notions of internationalcompetition to access the Chinese market in Breslin (2004).

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by deploying different theoretical approaches; approaches that (re)connect the

domestic with the international, that acknowledge the fragmentation of production

(and trade) in a post-fordist globalised economy; and move away from an

understanding of states as the sole repositories of power in the global political

economy.

Different Visions of China

Popular visions and understandings of China vary significantly, so any attempt to

provide an overview can only deal in challengeable overgeneralizations. With this

caveat in mind, we can observe that there are four major strands to popular visions

and understandings of China today the first two of which are the most important in

shaping popular understandings, and in some places, policy towards China. The first

focuses on China as a repressive and coercive authoritarian political system; perhaps

no longer a Stalinist dictatorship, but certainly not free. The campaigning work of

Human Rights and religious groups and those promoting Tibetan independence,

relatively frequent investigative media reports, and the annual US report on Human

Rights Practices3 all ensure that the issue remains on the international agenda albeit

with a rather lower profile today than in the days after 4th June 1989. This focus on

human rights frequently clearly irks many in China and not just party-state officials

but whilst it may be unpalatable, it is important to accept that this is indeed a strong

basis of many external visions and understandings of China. As will be discussed in

more detail below, perceptions of Chinas rise are very much coloured by concerns

about the type of political system that is rising.

3 These reports can be found on http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt. Since 1998, the Chinese

authorities have responded by issuing their own annual report on The Human Rights Recordof the United States see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/08/content_5817027.htm

3
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpthttp://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt


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Until fairly recently, the rights and freedom discourse was perhaps the

dominant source of perceptions of China. The vote in the US congress over whether

to renew Chinas Most Favoured Nation status provided an annual opportunity for

high profile discussion, as did the annual resolutions condemning Chinas human

rights record at the UN Human Rights Commission. But while such a resolution came

within one vote of being adopted in 1995, the EU stopped tabling resolutions in 1997

followed by the US in 2002. In addition, the need for an annual debate and vote in

Washington came to an end in 1999 when China was awarded Permanent Normal

Trade Relations as part of the process of ensuring WTO entry.

Such an apparent downgrading of the significance of human rights is, for some,

a result of the increasing significance of the second major image of China a vision

of a rich and economically (at least) powerful China that provides new challenges to

the existing balance of power in the global order. Whilst what China might become at

some point in the future is the focus for some, there is already a school of thought that

conceives of China asalready having great power in the global political economy, and

a larger school that suggests that the assumption of power is inevitable.4 It might be

tempting to dismiss these works as sensationalist, but this view of China has

resonance amongst a public who see media stories of the worlds biggest ship

bringing 11,000 containers of Christmas supplies from China to Europe to the relief

of children, parents and shopkeepers everywhere - but to the despair of European

manufacturers (Vidal 2006). And at times, the fear that this new manufacturing

superpower is leading to job losses in the West comes to the fore of political

4 For the argument that as a result, military conflict with the USA is inevitable see Bernsteinand Munro (1998), Timperlake (1999), Gertz (2002) and Menges (2005). Mosher (2000)argues that Chinas centuries old superiority complex is driving s strategy to return itself to itsrightful place of global dominance, while Thomas (2001), and Babbin and Timperlake (2006)

suggest that China is willing to ally with radical Islam to find a means of overcoming the US.For the view that economic superpower status is here or inevitable, see Weidenbaum andHughes (1996), Bacani (2003), Overholt (1994) and Murray (1998).

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campaigning as well particularly during election campaigns in the US. Not only is

this understanding firing popular perceptions of China, it is also has considerable

purchase in some policy making circles, influencing the adoption of policy towards

China.5

As noted above, these two visions tend to be dominant, but there are other

visions and interpretations. A third broad approach points to a bleak future. For some,

China has reached the limits of economic liberalisation within an authoritarian

political framework (Pei 2006) and is in a state of crisis (Pei 2002) searching for a

miracle (Nam 2003) to avoid the collapse of party rule and perhaps even the Chinese

state (Chang 2002). And then there are those who form a fourth broadly defined

group who acknowledge that massive changes have taken place in China and that

Chinas global significance has increased, but also point to the developmental

problems that remain to be resolved (and in some areas are getting worse), the real

social tensions that in some cases have been exacerbated by reform, and the domestic

governance challenges for the CCP.6 This latter set of writings tends to be academic

rather than policy oriented or popular and increasingly chimes with the research

agenda of Chinese researchers, the political-economic stance of the group of Chinese

intellectuals who fall under the broad heading of the New Left and the

developmental agenda of the fourth generation of Chinese leaders under Hu Jintao

and Wen Jiabao. Whilst these understandings have been reflected in the media,7 they

do not seem to have a significant impact on popular visions of China. Perhaps shades

of grey are simply less interesting and less immediate than stark black and white

statements and interpretations.

5 If not in the professional China watching foreign policy communities.6 Examples in chronological order include Bernstein and Lu (2003), Solinger (2005), Croll

(2006), Shirk (2007) and Breslin (2007).7 For example, in the UK, James Kynge of the Financial Times and Jonathan Watt of theGuardian regularly file stories focusing on those negative impacts of liberalisation.

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This paper has started from the assertion that Chinese power in the global

system is exaggerated and not surprisingly, would fit squarely in the last of these four

(overly)broad characterizations. But while the intention is indeed in part to provide an

antidote to some of the more hyperbolic interpretations of Chinese power, its main

intention is to consider why these different interpretations emerge (rather than simply

whether they are right or wrong). In trying to explain these varying approaches, we

need to concentrate on different sources of information, different audiences and

different theoretical approaches.

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Explaining Conflicting Visions

Evidential Contexts

Although it might sound counterintuitive, the increasing number of foreigners that

visit China can actually generate misunderstanding. Visitors typically do not stray far

from the newly built modern urban centres, and tend to come into contact with the

very real experiences of increasing prosperity but not the equally real experiences of

the less well off and the still poor. This is exacerbated by the Shanghai phenomenon.

Shanghai has in become the symbol of new China as images of the Pearl TV Tower

and the rest of Pudong have become common across the world as representative of not

just the vibrant, growing and increasingly rich parts of the Chinese economy, but of

Chinaper se.

For those lucky enough to spend much of our time either in China or reading

about China, there is a rich pool of evidence to draw on in building understandings.

Clearly this is not the case for many visitors to China, and even less so for the general

public whose contact with China is overwhelmingly from a distance or second hand.

Here what is provided by the media is of course very important, as too is the direct

exposure that they have to China or things Chinese. In much of the West, this was

until recently pretty largely confined to food. Over the last decade (and particularly

over the past five years) the rapid growth of Chinese exports has increased exposure

to the idea of China as a global economic force. Quite simply, when people think

about China, two key words often come first Made In.

This economic focus has been reinforced by the growth of Chinese outward

investment. Though still relatively small by global standards, the purchase of Rover

by SAIC in the UK, and the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to buy the US based

Unocal oil firm have contributed to the idea that China is becoming a major global

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force. This understanding is reinforced by Chinese resource diplomacy in Latin

America and in particular in Africa whether directly or indirectly, it appears as if

the Chinese are coming.

Per capita or Gross? Size really does matter

There is also the question of how evidence is calculated. Clearly if you take a gross

national position, then understandings of China might be rather different than

deploying per capita perspectives. Not very much multiplied by 1.3 billion equals an

enormous amount. We will return to the importance of per capita perspectives later,

but here it is worth acknowledging that the evidence supplied by gross figures really

is important. China might be a very low per capita producer of CO 2 for example, but

sheer numbers mean that the amount of CO2 China produces has massive significance

and has an important impact on the global commons.

So using this gross form of evidence is clearly valid in some contexts. The key

is to ensure that the most appropriate figures are used in each context. Returning to

the environmental example, China is rightly identified as being a major source of CO2

emissions, but if the per capita dimension is not considered, then it might not be

possible to think of effective solutions to the problem. For example, if existing

conceptions of solutions are just based on dealing with the environmental

consequences of wealth which might be expected with this level of emissions (and

indeed, does form part of the problem in China), then those environmental issues that

are consequences of underdevelopment and indeed even poverty may not be

considered. So in alerting policy makers to why China is significant, then the gross

size is important its whats done after the alerting has been achieved that can be

problematic if more nuanced approaches built on the reality of contemporary China

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are ignored.

Despite many epistemological differences, not least over the structural basis of

international relations, a key strand that links critical post-Marxist and postmodern

thinkers is the understanding that theory and knowledge are never politically neutral.

The analysis in this paper is more informed by the former than the latter, and in

particular the oft cited words of Robert Cox (1981: 128) that theory is always for

someone and for some purpose. So the questions that need to be addressed here are

for whom and for firstly what purpose are these images of China constructed?

For What Purpose

China as the Orange Peril?

One of the reasons that China generates so much interest is that many people are

really worried about what the rise of China will mean for them. Furthermore, it is not

just that China is changing, but that it is changing so quickly. It is not that long ago

that China was, in Napoleons terms, sleeping and irrelevant for most people in the

West. That it has become relatively important so quickly perhaps explains why fear of

China is sometimes so exaggerated.

But there is more to it that this. People really are worried about what China

represents now, and what China will or might mean for the global order. Here we

partly return to the issue of human rights and perceptions of a China that does not

adhere to our way of thinking or our way of doing things. And China also

represents in one entity two of the big fears of the last century the challenge to the

west from a resurgent and confident Asia, and the challenge to the west of

communism. In this respect, the twentieth century challenge to the west is embodied

in the construction of a sinophobia against a China that is both the yellow (Asian) and

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red (communist) perils combined, and therefore becomes a new orange peril for the

twenty-first century.

Promoting Visions of China in China

This fear of China is, in some parts at least, a consequence of the way in which the

Chinese authorities themselves have constructed a vision of China within China that is

then (partially) seen overseas. From the very onset of the reform process in 1978, the

Chinese leadership itself has placed a heavy emphasis on growth as an indicator of

success, and as a means of gaining legitimacy. In the past at least, Chinese authorities

have not shied away from triumphing their success in generating growth and doubling,

trebling and quadrupling GDP. Indeed, the target of raising GDP by a factor of X was

an often and loudly proclaimed objective of economic reform in the first place. At the

international level, the Peaceful Rise of China was developed by Zheng Bijian to

assuage concern over Chinas emerging role by pointing to the positive benefits that

China will bring for other economies.8 In this respect, GDPism has become a small

element of Chinese foreign policy in that arenas such as the Boao Forum for Asia are

used to reinforce the message that Chinese growth is a source of regional stability, and

therefore it is in other countries interests to engage the emerging economic power.

The Peaceful Rise discourse highlights a slight schizophrenia in the way that

the Chinese authorities project China internationally. On one hand, it not only serves a

strategic purpose, but also reflects a growing self confidence about Chinas global role.

But on the other hand, the Chinese leadership recognises that there has been much

more attention on the rise (jueqi ) than the peaceful (heping) half of the

8 For an English language explanation of the Peaceful Rise hypothesis, see Zheng (2005).

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slogan.9 As a result, it has reinforced the very China threat hypothesis in the US

and elsewhere that the peaceful rise was designed to contradict in the first place.

It is true that this message has been tempered when it comes to the

international level. The Chinese leadership is quick to point out to the rest of the

world that China is still a relatively poor and developing country that should not be

expected to shoulder the burdens and obligations of the rich. Witness, for example, the

(misguided) attempts to ensure that China was classified as a developing economy

during the WTO entry negotiations.10 It is also true, that the domestic discourse has

changed with the transfer of power to the fourth generation of leadership in the guise

of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. The emphasis on harmonious development (hexie

fazhan) is based on a recognition that much still remains to be done in terms

of promoting development (as opposed to just generating growth) and that the reform

experience has not been wholly successful for all. Which brings us to the key issue of

the relationship between growth and development, and interpretations of the two.

GDPism

When viewed with a little more historical distance, the 16th Party Congress may well

come to be seen as a key turning point in the evolution of economic reform in China.

It is not so much the focus on dealing with the negative consequences of reform that

have become associated with the Hu-Wen leadership, though this is clearly important.

Its more that for the first time (or more correctly, for the first time for a while), there

was a formal recognition that growth and development were not the same thing, and

9 Though Jiang Zemin is widely thought to have rejected the idea of Peaceful Rise when it wasfirst suggested as it was not a powerful enough signal of Chinas real potential, andunderplayed the potential lack of peace in future relations with Taiwan and possibly theUnited States.

10

Misguided because there are no definitions of developing at the WTO with the actual termsof any new member determined by hard nosed bargaining with existing members rather thanby pre-existing templates of duties and obligations. See Breslin (2003).

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that it was time to move the focus of attention from the former to the latter.

There is much that could be said about this domestic change, but in terms of

discussing how visions of China are constructed, the emphasis here is on the extent to

which external observations of China have tended to either focus on growth rather

than development or often to simply use the two terms interchangeably. As growth is

primarily a quantitative issue and development more qualitative, this creates a number

of misunderstandings (although there are was of measuring development of sorts

for example, Human Development Indexes). First, when you start from a very low

base, very high growth rates can be generated in relatively poor countries; produce

one tractor one year and two the next, and you have 100 per cent growth, but you still

only have three tractors. And then, of course, there is the additional questions of

which statistics to be used, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) or atlas method exchange

rates, and the already mentioned divergence between per capita and gross figures.

Proponents of Chinese wealth and power point to close to double digit growth

maintained for over two decades, yet China still remains a relatively poor country in

per capita terms coming in at 107th using PPP (US$6,600 per capita) and 128th

(US$1,740 per capita) using the atlas method in lists of the worlds richest countries

in per capita terms.

China as a whole may no longer be considered to be poor, but is still on

ranked as a middle income country at best, and more often as lower middle income.

If we take the higher of the per capita income figures using PPP calculations, then

China still comes out below Kazakhstan, Namibia, Tonga, Iran, Equatorial Guinea,

Thailand, Costa Rica and many others. Yet this is something that is overlooked or

perhaps deliberately ignored in the construction of some visions of China as already

rich and powerful. And notwithstanding the fact that millions have been brought out

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of poverty in China, Jeffrey Sachss assertion that we can see from China's

experience that the end of poverty is absolutely palpable and real in the space of a

very few years (Watts 2006) rather overestimates the situation, and skips over the

millions or rural Chinese that are still in poverty, the many millions more that are

danger of slipping back into poverty, and the increasing numbers of urban poor

(Breslin, 2007: 164-7).

Furthermore, whilst growth is clearly important in providing the wherewithal

for development programmes, growth does not necessarily lead to development. The

actions of governments in particular, but also other social forces are crucial in

ensuring that growth is utilised to create development. And has been argued by Wang

Shaoguang and Hu Angang (1993, 2001) Chinas ability to capture the benefits of

growth and use it for developmental projects Chinas state capacity - has been very

poor.11 There also seems to be a common assumption that China willfollow the same

path of progression up the value chain and follow the same developmental trajectory

of places like South Korea. Of course this might be the case there is much to

suggest that it probably will. But to assume that it is inevitable is simply apolitical

and ignores the key role of governments in establishing developmental policies and

transferring growth to development. Lets put teleological explanations aside and

think of the typical definition of politics as the art and science of government. As

Zha (2005) notes, whilst emulating the earlier developmental states of East Asia is

highly possible and perhaps probably, emulating the developmental failures of Latin

America in the 1970s is not impossible.

In addition, the investment-trade nexus has created growth and boosted

Chinas international profile without generating as much development as the growth

11

Notwithstanding the fiscal reforms of 1994 which at least allowed the central government toget hold of some of those fiscal revenues that had previously remained at the provincial level.See Bahl (1999) and Tsai (2004).

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figures might suggest to the casual observer an issue we will return to later in this

paper.

GDPism and the Neoliberal Project

It is not surprising that there is such a strong focus on Chinas growth figures they

really are impressive and as noted above, most people do not have the time and

resources to delve beneath the headline figures to think in ore nuanced ways. Related

to this, and somewhat tentatively, the focus on GDPism and growth might possibly be

related to the desire to promote the neoliberal project. The idea that China has

witnessed massive and rapid economic growth by abandoning socialist and embracing

market capitalism might represent a misunderstanding of the relationship between

state and market in contemporary China. Nevertheless, the understanding that Chinese

growth is because the masters of China turned towards capitalist enterprise (Baumol

2002: 3) and participation in the global capitalist economy has become widespread,

and the success of capitalism posited in stark contrast to the failure of socialism.

Furthermore, this is a message that appears to being heard and acted on in at least

some parts of the leadership of other reforming socialist states.

Location, Perspective and Interest

Where you are writing from (connected to who you are writing for) also appears to be

an important determinant of interpretations of China. This is partly because different

analytical approaches dominate academic and policy debates in some parts of the

world. For example, realist perspectives that are built on assumptions that generate

specific understandings are much more dominant in East Asian academia than they

are in parts of Europe (we will return to the issue of different theories and approaches

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shortly). It is also because the implications of a changing China are differentially felt

across the globe. For example, within East Asia, the growth of the Chinese economy

has already had a profound impact on both the structure of the regional political

economy, and on the developmental trajectories of individual regional states. The

significance of China is clear and present (though whether significance equates to

power is a different matter).

So the significance of China is perhaps understandably more real and obvious

in East Asia than it is elsewhere. Interestingly, the conception of China as a threat is

also much more evident in the US than it is in Europe for example, and the majority

of the literature predicting a future Chinese superpower challenging US power

emerges from writers based in the US, largely intended to influence US policy makers.

In discussing this diversity with colleagues based in North America, it has been

suggested that this reflects a lack of understanding of what China will become in

Europe. There may have been some truth in this assertion in the past, but China is

now very much on political and academic agendas across Europe today. Perhaps a key

difference here is the wide scale acceptance in Europe that there is little we can do to

change the evolution of chinas futures. As a 2000 report from the British House of

Parliament on UK relations with China put it, the United Kingdom can only hope to

influence events in China at the margins (Foreign Affairs Committee 2000). But in

the US, a change in policy towards China could make a difference hence perhaps

the intensity of competition to influence policy makers.12

This intensity of discussion in the US has, I suggest, resulted in China being

exaggerated to support different stances on Washingtons China policy. To

12 Though Kagan (2005) suggests that the US is not as powerful as many make out. He arguesthat the idea that we can manage China's rise is comforting because it gives us a sense of

control and mastery, and of paternalistic superiority. The lesson of history is this will not bepossible, and we need to understand that the nature of China's rise will be determined largelyby the Chinese and not by us.

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oversimplify the situation, both those who want to contact and those who want to

engage China feel the need to talk up Chinas importance and significance and power

to drown out the arguments of the other side or at the very least, talk in headline

figures and dont consider the totality of the developmental experience within China.

Those who see China as a threat and not militarily point to Chinas growing GDP,

trade, and in particular trade surplus with the USA and massive foreign currency

reserves (more of this later) as evidence of why China should be contained. Those

who see China as an opportunity point to similar data to prove just how important it is

to engage China to reap the economic rewards for the US.

It is particularly notable that some of the most assertive texts warning of the

implications of Chinas rise for the US are from the same publisher. Gertzs (2002)

The China Threat: How the Peoples Republic Targets America, Timperlakes (1999)

Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Military Threat to America, and Babbin and

Timperlakes (2006) Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United Statesare allpublished by Regnery. So too was Tripletts (2004) Rogue State, which argues that

Communist China, far from being a restraining force on North Korea, is actually the

power behind the regimehow North Korea is, in fact, Chinas knife wielded against

the United States.13 Regnery also published Year of the Rat(Triplett and Timperlake

2000) andBetrayal (Gertz 1999), which both accused President Clinton of selling out

US national interests to China. And Regnery do not hide the fact that their books are

aimed at what they call conservative readers and that they take pride in exposing

the liberal bias that so often pervades the mainstream media. 14

The annual theatre of the Most Favoured Nation vote may have gone, but

China remains an important part of political discourses in the US. Although, other

13 This is taken from the publishers webpage, www.regnery.com/regnery/040127_rogue.html14 This is taken from the publishers webpage, www.regnery.com/about.html

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foreign policy issues ultimately became much more important, relations and

particularly economic relations with China did form part of the Democratic

campaigns criticisms of George W Bush in late 2003 and 2004. For example, in June

2004, John Kerry responded to a US-China Economic and Security Review

Commission Report by criticising the Bush administration for not standing up to

Chinese violations of international law particularly in relation to currency

manipulation:

America has lost millions of manufacturing jobs. Just yesterday, we learned

that the trade deficit hit a new record. As the trade deficit with China has

ballooned, President Bush has stood on the sidelines. He has failed to do

anything to effectively address China's predatory currency manipulation, its

violation of intellectual property rights and other unfair trade practices that

violate its international obligations.15

Whether anything would really have changed in a Kerry administration is something

that we will never know. George Bush was not the first president to be criticised by

opponents over China policy. The Clinton administration was similarly castigated by

Republicans for being soft on China and ignoring US economic interests, not least

when Bush himself was campaigning for the Presidency. But as outsourcing to China

continues from the developed West, and Chinas economy (and exports from China)

continue to grow, it is likely that GDPist perspectives will continue to inform the

policy process particular, but not only, when an election beckons.

Whilst debating what China is (or might become) is perhaps most important in

the US, it is far from just a Washington phenomenon. In collecting evidence for the

aforementioned UK parliamentary report, a number of key UK based companies

15 Kerry Statement on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's Reporthttp://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0615b.html

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constructed a picture of what China might become economically. Without being

explicit, the message to government seemed to be that China is too big and good an

opportunity to miss, but this opportunity can only be tapped with significant

government support. Furthermore, it is a competitive business environment, and if one

government doesnt help its companies, then it will lose out to companies in other

countries who are getting support from their governments. Such help includes formal

technical aid for example, export credit guarantees but also soft political support.

For some critics, this soft support entails accepting Chinese agendas when it comes to

formal political dialogue, and the relegation of political objectives as secondary to

economic goals.

Different Theoretical Approaches

The Failure to Disaggregate the National

Perspectives of China also differ depending on which theoretical positions are

deployed. For example, some analytical approaches simply have no interest in the

differential impact of transformation within China, and instead focus on the aggregate

picture. For example, some economistic approaches particularly but not only those

that are related to the policy domain - tend to work on national level perspectives that

aggregate the economy into a single unit of analysis. The difference between these

approaches and those of scholars who consider the domestic dimension in China can

be summed up by thinking of the questions that their research starts from. For

example, the former would ask, is the WTO good for China? while the latter would

instead ask who in China will the WTO be good for, and who might it harm?.

Focusing the investigation on the aggregate ignores the disaggregated and

segregated political reality. To be sure it is easier to consider the nation as a single unit

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of analysis, but political life is not neat and simply, but messy and complex. We have

already noted above the definition of politics as the art and science of government,

but we should remember Harold Lasswells (1936) alternative definition of politics as

the study of who gets what, when and how.

Whilst the above points to ontological failings (or omissions) of some

economistic approaches, there are similar failings and or omissions within some

international relations approaches. It is not surprising that politics and international

relations are typically grouped together as a single discipline. The two are usually

taught alongside each other in individual academic departments or schools many of

which happily carry the title of Politics and International Relations. But in part at

least, different visions of China emerge from the tendency for the two to be isolated as

separate and distinct fields of enquiry and the fact that some international relations at

least has become depoliticised

For many in the realist tradition, there is an assumed national interest

pursued by state actors (and state actors alone) that is unaltered by either the changing

ideological preferences of state elites or shifting societal interests and alliances. To be

fair, this is something of a blunt characterisation and generalisation of the broad

school that we refer to as realism. There are of course realist writers who do consider

domestic unit level factors, and how they condition state actors in framing foreign

policy. For example, neoclassical realists accept that the domestic level shapes

interests and preferences, but believe that states freedom to act in pursuit of these

interests is constrained by the nature of the international system they have some

agency, but this agency is structurally constrained.16 Such an approach either

explicitly or by implication characterises the work of those country specialists who

16

Gideon Roses (1998) review of Zakaria (1998), Wohlforth (1993), Schweller (1998),Christensen (1996) and Brown, Lynn-Jones, and Miller (1995) provides a good overview ofhow neoclassical realism differs from traditional and neo realism.

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study the domestic sources of foreign policy whilst retaining an belief in the

overarching principles of realism, and is perhaps best exemplified in Avery

Goldsteins (2005) study of Chinas Grand Strategy. But for many realists, where

national interests come from is for others to consider the job of an IR scholar is to

study the resulting interplay of politicsbetween states, leaving the study of politics

within states for others to consider. The diversity and complexity of different opinions,

aspirations and interests is often ignored or considered irrelevant, and the language of

IR focuses on a single unit of analysis - China thinks, China says, and China

wants.

It is not just realist scholars that tend to treat China as a single actor or entity.

Those who write from a liberal tradition should be aware of the need to disaggregate

the state and consider on whose behalf state actors are undertaking IR. They should

also be aware of the need to move beyond the state as an actor in IR, considering the

role of a range of non state actors but most clearly economic actors. Yet although

there is a strong liberal tradition in writings on Chinese IR, the liberalism often only

extends to the process and objectives of engaging China the way in which engaging

China can bring it into the international system and socialise it into the dominant

western liberal global order. It is also sometimes extended to an understanding of who

is engaging China but moving beyond a simply statist understanding (though typically

based on an understanding that it is still governments who are the main actors and

facilitate engagement). But much of this liberal literature in some ways stops being

liberal when it gets to the Chinese side of the equation, still treating the Chinese state

as a single straightforward unit of analysis and of Chinese state actors asthe actors in

IR. The concept of China as the unit of investigation is not always questioned, and the

question of which groups and interests Chinese state actors are representing is rarely

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asked. Once again, the failing here is the aggregation of China into a single focus of

analysis that is the problem for me

IR analyses of Transnational Economic Networks

Many realists are also largely unconcerned about economics viewing it as a separate

sphere of enquiry to be left to economists to study. However, there are two exceptions

to this general rule. First, international economic relations are considered to be

important when they embody or reflect power politics between states in a game of

mercantilist competition a subset of politics that can be dealt with by state-to-state

diplomatic relations with little attention paid to the role of non-state actors. Second,

economic factors are important in establishing conceptions of national power that

move beyond traditional security issues something akin to the Chinese conception

of comprehensive national power (zonghe guoli). The language of

international relations that focuses on the state as actor is echoed in political analyses

of actors in international economic relations, which in turn feed into understandings

of Chinas rising economic power China dominates in the production of, China

leads the way in exports of, China is the leading producer of, and so on (Hale and

Hale 2003).17 Here international economic relations are typically viewed in terms of

interactions between nation states (or equivalents1). As with those economistic

approaches noted above, the domestic economy is aggregated into a single unit -

China.

Not only does this approach fail to disaggregate China itself

geographically, sectorally, and in all the ways already mentioned above it also

17 Its a bit unfair to cite Hale and Hale as an example here as they acknowledge that Chinasleading position is largely a result of foreign investment. But this piece remains a good

example partly because it largely considers China as a single unit of analysis, and also partlybecause articles in Foreign Affairs are read by a wider audience than articles in purelyacademic journals.

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makes a fundamental error. It tends to treat international economic relations as exactly

that inter national (between nations) whereas the reality of trade and investment

patterns does not conform to conceptions of two states (or even more states) doing

things to each other when it comes to trade and investment. This conceptual error is

compounded by the evidential context used to support such inter national approaches -

and then people look at these misleading statistics and develop misled conclusions

about Chinese power in the production of these goods. Trade and investment figures

are bilateral in nature, displaying an interaction that at best is only a snapshot of what

is happening at one small part of a much longer chain of interactions. Moreover, the

penultimate territory in which production takes place is typically considered to be the

exporter and credited with the resulting trade surplus with the final territory (the

market). Notwithstanding regulations on rules of origin in calculating trade figures, it

is still the case that 100 per cent of the value of an import to the USA can be credited

to China, ever if the majority of that value was originally imported to China from

other territories. Although Chinese companies do seem to be occupying more of the

product chain, historically at least, exports from Foreign Invested Enterprises have

been massively dependent on imported components - primarily from South East Asia,

Taiwan and Japan but also from the US and Europe.

China as a whole is clearly benefiting from its position in the global economy

but not as much as appears at first sight to the casual observer looking at the

aggregate figures (and certainly not as much as those who point to the inevitable

China challenge to world order often suggest). Others have also benefited

significantly from what has happened in China. For example, consumers in the west

are now paying less in actual pounds, dollars and euros (let alone real terms) for

goods than they were five or even 10 years ago. And some of the main beneficiaries

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of economic growth in China have been the companies that have closed their old

factories in the expensive developed world and moved their production to China (and

elsewhere) even if this has resulted in job losses in the west that are often blamed on

this thing called China.

Of course, its entirely understandable that international relations scholars

focus on relations between nations. But if we want to keep nations as the unit of

analysis, then we need to be much more nuanced and consider how post-fordist

production process result in a highly fragmented process spanning many different

countries.18 Is it China that is leading the way, for example, in the production of TVs

and computers or even training shoes, or is china still largely the conduit through

which money and technology from other countries is processed? Is China the

generator of global growth, or the conduit through which other interests outside China

maintain dominant positions on global trade and investment hierarchies? Perhaps after

all, the search for the location of power in nations is misplaced, and we should instead

be considering key global actors such as Walmart and Nike in our search for the

location of global power.

Conclusions GDPism, Domestic Politics, and International Relations

The suggestion that growth should not simply be equated with development would

come as no surprise whatsoever to the Chinese leadership. Indeed, the period between

the 16th and 17th party congresses in 2002 and 2007 respectively witnessed a key shift

from a growth to a developmental paradigm. Clearly, generating growth is important

but its what is done with that growth that generates development (or not as the case

may be). The evidence of the previous paradigm under Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji

18 That much more of this investment has its origins in the US that the bilateral investmentfigures can show is an entire study in itself - and forms part of Breslin (2007: 106-30).

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was that unevenly distributed growth had not only exacerbated inequality, but had

also failed to reduce poverty as much as might have been expected, and had done little

to ensure the adequate provision of health education and welfare (particularly in rural

areas). Additionally for Yu Yongding (2006), the predominance of processing

assembly in Chinese trade has meant that export growth has had a remarkably minor

impact in terms of promoting domestic industrial upgrading and laying the

foundations for a more sustainable and developmentally orientated economic future.

Whilst the Chinese media takes care to show the party as a successful and

modernising organisation, this vision of China is balanced with a recognition of the

many developmental objectives that remain to be attained, and the crucial role that

party and state officials have to play at all levels to reach these goals.

So a key conclusion of this paper is that the study of chinas global role should

be re-embedded in the study of the domestic. At the very least, those

understandings/predictions that ignore the domestic (or assume a continued stable

political position with the only challenge a democratic one) should acknowledge that

they cannot even start to understand how the social problems identified by Chinese

scholars and the current Chinese leadership create significant constraints on global

ambitions and global potentials. In addition, it is simply apolitical to simply assume

that China will follow expected developmental trajectories irrespective of political

action by the government and other actors within China.

A second conclusion is that misunderstandings or unrealistic evaluations of

Chinese power are partly deliberately constructed by interested parties in an attempt

to influence policy and that these evaluations have a real impact on the construction

of other countries policies towards China. So in some respects, whether China really

does possess such power or not is irrelevant if it is assumed to be powerful now or

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soon, and policies developed on the understanding that China has that power now,

then Chinese power is bestowed on it from others.

The third conclusion is that how China is perceived depends very much on the

epistemologies and approaches deployed. Most clearly, at least some of the

exaggerated understandings of China as inevitable superpower soon and engine of the

global economy now are mistaken because of the way that observers conceive of

international relations in general, and international economic relations in particular.

The aggregation of China into a single unit for analysis and the focus on economic

relations between nation states may generate simple and easily comprehended

conclusions about the nature of power in world of nation states. But if the reality of

production, finance and trade does not simply map onto a state centric conception of

inter-national relations, then focussing on the latter cannot explain the future. Ease of

comprehension is clearly laudable - but not if it is only achieved by ignoring the

messy complexity of multiple transactions in a post-fordist global capitalist world.

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Documents

WRAP Breslin Breslin Revised for Jeapp